Water pollution is a serious issue that affects each individual person on earth (as well as other plants and wildlife) and even plays a role in national economies. One country had planned major projects in hopes of improving the water pollution and an unlikely crustacean and its cost are both contributing to global water issues.

In the U.S., roughly 25% of all beaches are closed at least once a year because of this water pollution. That’s why civil engineering projects and environmental consulting are so important. A country’s civil engineering budget should always set aside a significant portion of funds for water pollution control. According to Business Insider, China attempted to do this, but failed on a massive scale.

After an audit, it was determined that China set aside $2.5 billion (17.6 billion yuan) for water pollution prevention projects for the 2016 fiscal year. The issue, however, is that those funds were missed.

The $2.5 billion were supposed to go towards a total of 397 projects in 18 Chinese provinces, some of which would completely reinvent environmental protection laws for those particular provinces, but the money never made it. China’s audit office announced in December of 2016 that more than 3,000 people had been punished for improperly using those funds that were set aside for water pollution projects. The same office plans on auditing roughly $261 billion (1.8 trillion yuan) in other special civil engineering funds.

In addition to the misplaced billions that could’ve helped improve the quality of water across the world, the price of shrimp is even directly related to water fertilization and pollution.

Yahoo! News reports that a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that hypoxia, a low-oxygen water issue, is actually related to the rising price of big-sized shrimp.

“Many studies have documented the ecological impacts of hypoxia, but establishing a clear causal link to economic losses in affected fisheries has been elusive,” said Martin Smith, study lead author and professor of environmental economics at Duke University. “Because fishermen are catching more small shrimp and fewer large ones during these months, the price of small shrimp goes down and the price of large ones goes up, creating a short-term disturbance in the market that we can track.”

Whether it’s properly allocating funds for major water pollution projects or being away of increasing prices for seafood, it’s important we all do our part to address the water pollution epidemic across the world.

Help Wanted

These may be tough economic times, but there are still plenty of government jobs for the taking! The infrastructure and construction paid for by the federal economic development require thousands of workers to build.